masha wysocka - Appelen uit Mechelen

Appelen uit Mechelen, 2025

It is an installation that combines text, photography, and textiles. It is part of the research-based project My Tailor is (not) Rich supported by an artistic research grant from the Belgian Ministry of Culture, Wallonie-Bruxelles, in 2025. It aims to deconstruct stereotypes about Jewish communities.

For this installation, I worked with the archival collection from Kazerne Dossin. The central piece is a letter from Lotte (Lottie), a young German-Jewish girl who emigrated to Belgium in the 1930s with her sister, Leonie, and their parents, Dina and Heinrich. The letter, written in October 1941, was addressed to their former non-Jewish neighbours, the Percks from Antwerp.

All members of the Dreyfuss-Isenberg family were sent from the Kazerne Dossin barracks to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were murdered in 1942.

Sometimes, signs of impending catastrophe can be found in the most ordinary things, like apples. A few months before their detention at Kazerne Dossin, the Dreyfuss-Isenberg family stopped in Mechelen to buy apples while travelling to Leuven. They had to leave their apartment in Antwerp due to antisemitic violence in the city. As the Yiddish proverb goes, "In a beautiful apple, you sometimes find a worm."

This installation is the outcome of a residency at RADAR, which is funded by the city of Mechelen.

The installation at Cultuurcentrum Mechelen was featured at the OUTSIDE IN Festival from April 17 to April 27, 2025.